Your Soul's Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born [Tapa blanda]

Rundown of the book - It's not about helping you find your own purpose, unfortunately. It's got 6-7 chapters, each one focusing on traumatic or tragic life events and how they changed some people. Two to 3 people's traumas/tragedies are highlighted in each chapter. Their guides, angels or higher selves are channeled and they talk about the pre-birth agreement the soul made and how this tragedy would help the person achieve whatever he wanted to achieve in this lifetime - the reasons for their particular tragedy/trauma.

The chapters are: Physical Illness (2 people are highlighted, one with AIDS, the other breast cancer. Accidents; Deafness and Blindness; Alcoholism and Drug Addiction; Parenting Handicapped Children; Death of a Loved One.

I was bothered with the fact that the only way that souls, apparently, choose to learn is through suffering. It's the typical eastern and western philosophy, yet again. No one grew through insight or emotional searching, questioning or personal angst, only through paralysis or a son dying through drug overdose or having two very disabled children or getting AIDS or having a bomb blow up in their face or their fiance dying in a diving accident. There was no learning through chronic illness or emotional abuse or more benign "suffering." It always had to be really tragic, traumatic. It seems such an contemporary human way of looking at the world, always pain and suffering before one can grow. It's so typical of the philosophies/religions these days and days past.

The author asks the guides that are channeled why suffering has to occur for growth, and the answer is because the physical plane is about duality. This worn out example is used: How can you experience joy if you've never felt sadness? How can you experience light if you've never been in the dark? Although I understand this and see the validity, it annoys me that severe long-lasting suffering is the "only" way that people can seem to find their purpose, according to this book. Only through suffering can a person access his soul and then understand why he chose events in this lifetime. Only then can he proceed toward his true life's work.

Also, I found it annoying that the book focused on the people in the book and their plan. It says it helps you figure out your soul purpose, but without already having figured it out pretty much on your own by that point, this book would just talk about other people, who are interesting, and you might be able to find parallels, but contrary to the back cover, it doesn't help you access or understand your own personal blueprint at all.

Sure, you can see how your situation is similar to others if you have some similar tragedy in your life. I certainly saw distinct similarities between me and someone in the book, but all she figured out I had already figured out. If I hadn't done the emotional work I had, perhaps this book would have helped open my eyes, so I could see why the event "happened" to me. Maybe that explains all the 5 star ratings. People see themselves in these common human events and it helps them come to terms with their suffering.

My final assessment is this: Humanity is moving beyond the idea that the only way toward personal growth is through suffering. Up to this point, perhaps much of humanity needed something negative to change, but I feel we're moving beyond this concept.

This book perpetuates the myth that the only way to enlightenment is through suffering. I find this outdated and untrue. Humanity is ready to move beyond this destructive concept. That's what the Aquarian Age is all about, this New Age. We're leaving the Piscean Age of suffering, victimization, and martyrdom behind. What a relief!

What can I say in description of a book that has had more healing impact in my life than any I have read in a lifetime of 62 years? As a lifetime professional counselor, I have read and studied many books focused on the prospect of healing, but Robert Schwartz's Your Soul's Plan brought the events of my life more into focus than any I have read. I say this, not only as a healer, but also as a Vietnam Veteran, ex-helicopter ambulance pilot with a lifetime of challenge to overcome my own legacy of suffering.

Arranged in a series of case histories, tied together by the theme that there is an overarching life plan, planned pre-birth at a soul-level, we are made aware of how our own lives can fit the pattern he describes. With almost a hundred reviews here, I'll not go into repetition of the details so well described already. There are some things I would like to add.

For those of a skeptical scientific or conventional religious bent, the gentle narrative approach of Schwartz's writing will help you explore ideas that may seem unfamiliar or threatening to you. The consistencies in his discoveries that support his theme are particularly interesting. In my line of work, we might say that - while this may not be "good science" at this point, his discoveries have clinical validity when explored at the level he follows. My own life experiences and observations allow me to be open to the validity of psychic investigation, when it is genuine. Schwartz seems to have put together a good team of psychics to pursue his study. Obviously, it is difficult to establish validation, except on a personal level - but each of us ultimately can only establish truth on a personal level. Consensus and belief about truth can only take us so far.

What I find fascinating is how Schwartz is able to attain consistencies in details about each case he studies, when going from one psychic to another, without communication between the psychics. When one psychic reading of a person corroborates another of the same person, often elaborating or picking up where the other left off, even a skeptic would be hard-put to deny the significance! Such consistency in detail cannot just be made up! Beyond the attribution of clinical validity, where the person recognizes the healing/illuminating effect in his/her life, we now begin to approach the groundwork for scientific study.

Most of all, though, is the warmth and gentle compassion that Schwartz brings through in his work - done in a way that opens the reader to one of the most powerful insights we could have: that a Higher Power endlessly works through us, in total love and compassion, with an endless agenda to help us grow through the endless adventure we call life. Beyond being helpless victims of fate, we need only take responsibility for finding meaning in our experiences and for our endless God-given potential.

Granville Angell, author of The God-Shaped Hole - A Story of Comfort for The Child in All of Us

Intelligently presented, fast-paced; here is your inside look at pre-birth planning sessions and why souls choose difficult earth journeys for soul growth purposes. It is script writing at the soul level for earth incarnations. This book was hard to put down.

The author has utilized talented mediums to access a soul's pre-birth planning sessions and the resulting stories have you right there watching the planning unfold. For me, this was the high point of each chapter; being present at the pre-birth planning sessions.

Some challenges a soul may wish to set up can be so great that other souls have doubts about being players, so often bargaining is done until agreement is either reached or another soul steps in to take the assignment, or the plan is re-written. This book has you right there, watching the planning unfold and hearing the actual soul conversations.

No abuse to, or affliction of, a soul on the earth level occurs without prior pre-birth agreement. You will learn the reasons why difficult lives are sought and how souls close to you participate in the planning process.